Call
to order –President
Margie Sauls called the meeting to order at 2:00 P.M.

Member/Visitor
introductions -
Members shared their current writing projects.

Old
Business-

Members were reminded
that they may read the Minutes online at the NFW website.

New Business-

Rita inquired as to
whether the group would be doing another Anthology. A brief
discussion was held, but no decision was made. The group was open to
exploring the idea.

Margie announced that
the speaker for July would be Lynn Thompson and gave us a choice of
topics from which to select. The members chose: “Editing for
Continuity: preserving the characters, locations and realities in
your book.”

Treasurer’s
Report-

Treasurer Howard Denson
announced that there is $2017.00 in the account. He also announced
that yearly dues are $25 for new members and that their due date
would be one year from their joining. He also passed around a
statement so everyone could see the new format and design that the
bank is now using.

Writing
Workshop:

Howard Denson conducted
a mini-workshop on “Dialogue in Stories, Novels and Non-fiction.”
Three handouts were distributed. He reviewed errors in dialogue
citing examples and stated that characters shouldn’t sound alike
giving ways to avoid that they do. He also discussed punctuation in
dialogue and the importance of using active rather than passive
language. Another point was that good openings are critical to
engaging the reader.

Critique Session:

Seven members
contributed the following to be read: 4 chapters from 4 novels, the
scene from a play and a short story. It was decided that the one
remaining chapter that wasn’t read, due to time constraints, would
be read first at the next meeting.